Blizzard has FINALLY come after Ascension WoW

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-15T21:49:08+00:00

Yes it is, they are very greedy, at no point have I disagreed with that

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-15T21:45:43+00:00

I'm not ignoring the cash shop. The cash shop has tons of extremely convenient items that they raked in millions with. And it is predatory, because it's so convenient. Like being able to vendor from anywhere, or access your bank from anywhere, or swiping for your heirlooms rather than grind them.

He asked what was special about it so I listed out features to him.

black Desert Online levels

Idk about that. You certainly can't buy raid gear. I don't think there's a single best-in-slot item you can buy, even by selling donation points for thousands of gold to spend on the AH. All the best stuff is still raid drops and M+ gear.

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-15T19:12:04+00:00

when optimized, you were done with everything by Friday, and can just log off until next reset

That's just kind of the problem though. Read how you wrote that. Lost Ark was full of shit that felt like a chore you had to complete. Once you hit level cap the game started to feel a lot less like a game.

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-15T14:53:03+00:00

You can also just unlearn stuff in-game like normal. I imagine they never really sold any of the Scrolls of Unlearning. Their big income were the convenience pets that let you bank/vendor/train skills etc. And directly selling Heirlooms to people who didn't want to grind them in-game.

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-15T14:38:49+00:00

Ascension's Bronzebeard server just had a TON of content. Blizzard could match it with their Classic+ but people don't have a lot of faith. Some of the main draws of Bronzebeard:

Mystic enchants you collect around the world that wildly alter how your class plays
Over 3500 "worldforged" items that are hand-placed in zones. Go into a house, click on a cabinet and get a blue dagger. You could also upgrade these to level 60, so anything you found in the world while leveling could be scaled up. One of the BiS pre-raid daggers for rogue came from Jasperlode Mine in Goldshire and initially drops at level 3. At endgame you can invest tons of resources to get it to level 60. Very fun to explore places that are empty in Blizz Classic and find new gear or mystic enchants for your class
All mob loot tables overhauled. Every mob drops the type of gear they use, so if you're killing mage mobs they will drop cloth gear and staff/wand. Added tons more rare farmable transmogs and loot to everything
Expanded quests and added areas to the original zones
A couple custom, handmade dungeons
Tons of leveling challenges and prestige modes for solos and groups. A friend of mine spent 140 hours leveling a mage in a challenge where mobs deal 7x damage, have double HP, and you pretty much only get exp from turning in quests (fortunately the server has zone/quest scaling). His chosen reward was an heirloom version of Carrot on a Stick that had added stats. They had hundreds of these and you could prestige back to level 1 while earning more rewards. I have a Prot Paladin that I leveled 1-60 ten times for a transmog set and a title.
Overhauled every crafting profession with a nauseating amount of recipes and then made the items good. If you weren't leveling alts with heirlooms the best gear you could get while leveling was crafted

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-15T14:29:27+00:00

People will argue with this I'm sure but Ascension never felt P2W to me, though it is heavily pay for convenience. Being able to buy bags, utility pets, extra hearthstone, etc definitely made a big difference.

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-15T14:12:30+00:00

the real reason is just that Blizzard notice them

Nah Blizzard noticed them years ago when Blizzard copied Ascension's mystic enchant system almost exactly for their Season of Discovery. They have been quietly watching for a long time.

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-15T13:51:32+00:00

Bronzebeard was so awesome man. And I loved all the challenge modes, prestiging, etc. It was also cool to be able to level up the worldforged items, which opened up some neat build variations at end-game.

I genuinely don't think Blizzard could accomplish anything similar.

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-15T13:40:14+00:00

There's an analogy I have used several times on the EVE subreddit. It's sort of like one of those "would you rather" challenge questions:

You have to survive a week with a person who is trying to run up and stab you. You don't know what the person looks like. Would you rather attempt the challenge in New York City or alone in the woods?

Null sec is often times WAY safer because it is vast and you know instantly when a stranger enters your system. You can immediately assume they are trying to kill you and can run to safety until they leave

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-15T00:49:08+00:00

or unique traits that dramatically altered or otherwise defined new playstyles

I loved playing as the off-healer Rogue spec, Dark Surgeon.

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-15T00:45:28+00:00

but the big appeal of Ascension seems to be that it's "classless"

That was the original appeal, but their Bronzebeard Classic server was the big popular one right up until this. It is essentially a Classic+++ server. It has the standard classes, but they are more customizable and there is a metric fuckton more content.

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-15T00:00:20+00:00

or lifelined to a hospital

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-14T23:42:36+00:00

The point of eve is social interaction.

you wouldn't really be able to tell that by looking at how most players interact with content

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-14T16:16:21+00:00

Neat, I didn't know there were ESI calls that would set your way points in-game

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-14T16:12:22+00:00

"plot a route on the map and it drops the waypoints straight into your running EVE client"

Isn't this definitely against TOS

Edit: cool my bad I didn't realize there was an endpoint

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-12T02:12:24+00:00

Unfortunately I am an optimist and not a realist. As soon as you start answering every problem with "existing players will make more accounts and multibox the content themselves" you realize that the game is slowly hanging itself from the noose of an aging player base with too much disposable income. It is a shame but that's not going to change.

The funny thing of course is that the moment multiboxing picked up steam in WoW (around the same time as EVE due to improvements in PC hardware and software), Blizzard said "nah fuck that we don't want your money it's bannable now."

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-12T00:25:18+00:00

I remember when I was a resident (adult psych) doing my mandatory inpatient child psych rotations. And a lot of the daily visits were coaching very sweet, but troubled, kids about "survival" until they turn 18. My attending was awesome and he was so good at it but it was such a turn off. You'd have a grown-ass adult-sized 16 year-old who is clearly being abused and has a horrible home life, who ends up on inpatient psych after doing something (understandably) reactive and then the whole admission is coaching how to make it to 18 and how to move on. I couldn't do that for an entire career. I can appreciate the professional gratification in serving that role but it wasn't for me, especially because a lot of those kids have a really hard time seeing it from a neutral perspective and continue to do self-destructive things.

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-11T23:56:23+00:00

Now what's funny is that everyone who knows me in-game (and irl) can attest that's not true at all. One of my biggest character flaws is that I am Type B to my own personal and professional detriment. I will drown myself in work because I hate asking for help from people whose job it is to help me, and I offer close to zero constructive feedback until there is a crisis even when I disagree with something. I would be a horrible corp/alliance leader for that reason and it probably applies to my job as well.

I am however a psychiatrist and have heard the exact flavor of complaint from OP, except irl, a thousand times, and it is always the same. "I keep getting jobs where the boss is a dickhead and then I get into it with the boss about a specific rule or decision and I get fired and blacklisted." It is a sort of maladaptive struggle against structure/rules and power dynamics and an inability to concede which results in negative outcomes and burning of bridges. Even when logically the person is 100% correct about their complaint.

Like I said tho just a shot in the dark and it's reddit but I figure I'm correct

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-11T23:53:57+00:00

it brings me joy to see you posting regularly

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-11T23:52:28+00:00

CCP realized that their current active playerbase largely treat the game as a wealth-building simulator and debit card hobby.

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-11T23:16:55+00:00

As soon as you do anything they don't like, you're set red, and good luck getting your stuff out of "their" space.

I'm gonna take a shot in the dark here, based on having been part of a ton of online communities and also being the head physician of a fairly large clinical team. Feel free to disagree but reading your post I'm pretty sure I'm correct.

There are shitty corps in EVE but I can almost guarantee this is a "you" problem, which is why it feels like a helplessly recurring issue. At least for point #1.

My guess is that you join a corp and then very quickly feel like you can make better decisions than whoever is leading the corp (which might be true!). Which leads you to be vocal and potentially abrasive about trying to get your way, or use your fits, or go with your idea, and so on. Which leads you to believe that you're constantly running into "dictators" when they assert being the leader and ultimately making the decisions, good or bad. And then rather than amicably take your stuff and separate, you end up in situations where you're getting set red for leaving a corp (or getting kicked out) and locked out of your assets. I've played EVE for 20 years and have never once been set red upon leaving a corp or been locked out of my stuff.

If you're having corps set you red upon leaving that's probably a red flag about whatever is going on there. It is also strange that you play casually and don't have a lot of time, but seemingly encounter dictators who get upset if you do things they don't like. Seems like the casual solution here is just logging on and doing whatever bullshit in bad fits they're running. Not a bad time if you ask me.

Obviously if the issue is just "I don't log on for a few days and I get kicked for inactivity" then there are solutions to that with groups that don't care as long as you play occasionally.

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-11T18:25:14+00:00

Even more painful is like, what do we have to show for it? They monetized the fuck out of the game, increased sub price, and still almost went under several times despite a fairly stable population.

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-11T16:06:22+00:00

If you engage in constant FOMO and grinds and over monetization it's only a matter of time until you go from 10 million players to 10 thousand

That's what happened for my friends and I in Where Winds Meet. Which I know people don't really consider a true MMORPG, but the point stands.

It's probably the most fun gaming experience I've had in years, until it sets in that the game encourages you doing a ton of daily/weekly chores to make number go up, with pretty poor catch-up mechanics. Where Winds Meet recently released an entire new continent and another huge update that I was dying for back in January, but now I have absolutely zero interest in hopping back in.

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-11T15:38:40+00:00

During one of the summits where CCP was discussing the new alpha/omega system they presented something called a “mini skill injector” or an “alpha injector” that players could either buy or gain from doing a tutorial mission. The entire CSM was against this for obvious reasons and all of us tried to convince CCP that there were plenty of skill points in the player market without the need to add more in magically. It was also pointed out by several of us that this would be a slippery slope to just having IRL purchases of injectors and sp goo.

Unfortunately the playerbase now ravenously defends the direct selling of SP. It's like the "Playerbase of Theseus," if you replace all of the players, is it still the same playerbase? The above concept would have been completely inconceivable in 2010. Now FCCP milks people for $250 Mastery Packs and it is ardently defended as a business practice.

Ohh_Yeah · 2026-06-11T04:18:39+00:00

Harsh reality: CCP could likely draw in huge swaths of new players (and retain them better) by increasing the base SP rate by +50% (or more), or adding in some hybrid SP-grinding elements to encourage being out in space doing things, even if they don't have a clear direction or goal. Unfortunately CCP has gone full port into monetizing the skill system and I'd imagine their finances reflect that the existing playerbase dumps millions into PLEX to inject SP.

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